20201031.0430

On this day
Precisely equal to
The subject of another one of your false wars
As the Good Doctor put it once
Will you
Still
Say that masks are folly
When you are all too apt to
Cover your own faces in
White draperies
And hide behind a thin line
That must not be very strong if
It needs so much support
Or to hide yourselves among
The feigned emblems and images of those
Whose deaths and dislocations
Have not been enough to satisfy your greed?
Will you still say
It's just a joke
It's just good fun
And will you laugh when
Your own martyrs are lampooned
Bruited about as bunting
More on one day
But not only on the one?

20201030.0430

Boasting not the best of bardcraft,
Still I seek to stories tell,
Long for laurels and laud and honor,
Yearn for youths of years to come
To know my name, not forget it
When the grave gapes and gathers me in,
Sleep-space in common. So I write,
Pushing a pen or the pixels fixing
That show on the screen, seen, hopefully,
Maybe by many; I must act so.

20201029.0430

Sometimes the ore is plentiful,
Ready to the pick and easy to refine;
Sometimes there's a struggle to bring it to light,
A challenge to get it up out of the mine.
Sometimes, though, the lode appears to run out,
And the digging must turn another way;
Sometimes the poor miner must leave off the work
And return back to it on another day.

20201028.0430

Who ruined the depths called out from the pastures,
And from near a rally came the reply
Done in, somewhat fishy, some time in the future,
A sequence attended, as none can deny.
What Oread comes from Cithaeron these days
To follow the flower-face all writers are,
Or is it only in god-cursed times
That any would think to travel so far?

20201027.0430

When night falls for me alone
The daylight spent and gone away
And darkness shrouds my sight
The stars that twinkle shift and sway
The firmament not firm at all
That holds them and me in its grip
Nor black, but dimly coruscating
Along fractal patterns' trip

20201026.0430

Too many seek to be the jester in
The court where Stupid God rewards the sin
Not of not knowing but of turning again
Away from knowing when knowledge is plain
To find, as now, and none have to refrain
From drinking deep at its well. No, the stain
Upon their souls is in refusing gifts
Of such sort as each of us uplifts,
Preferring instead to maintain the rifts
That hinder them and keep them from their ease,
That keep them riven with the foul disease
By which the Stupid God alone is pleased.
They can cavort, of course, as they desire--
But we must pay who did not give them hire.

20201025.0430

A chicken pecking after grain
Takes up more than the refrain
A songsmith writes, sometimes with pain,
And often to far greater gain
Than pecking done upon the keys
Upon a board approached with ease,
Though neither case will often cease
Until each finds desired release.

20201024.0430

The finish on the keys is worn away
Unevenly
Leaving a polished shine behind
Backspace gleaming brightest

20201023.0430

Sitting here
In my preferred parking spot
Hidden by trees and back from the street
I feel I should do some more scurrilous thing
Than compose short bits of verse
But then I remember
It is an addictive, insidious drug
And I think I ought to charge more for it
Knowing the day may well soon come
That I am a criminal for making it

20201022.0430

They have no need for ghosts
Whom memories haunt
No rattling chain and screaming siren voice scares more
Than things done badly and recalled in full detail
At odder intervals than a tritone
No apparition's touch more chilling than
Knowing what ought to have been done
And did not happen
And no spectre is more real than those

20201021.0430

Again, the bean sidhe scream
Thrice in far less than an hour
And I can only think an offering is being made
To draw them off from where they'd elsewise go
But where that is, I do not know
Nor know I who would send to such a shade
Who would presume to command such power
And mightier yet seem

20201020.0430

The electric bean sidhe scream again
Scant moments after they ceased crying
The sound of their mourning ringing through the town
And others' tears are soon enough to follow
I wonder when it will be mine that fall

20201019.0430

It's usually the slammed car door
Or rumbling diesel engine coming just a bit too close
That interrupts the susurration of
Cars driving past on the nearby streets or
The joyful ululation of
Children leaving class in their parents' care
But sometimes it is wailing sirens
Electric bean sidhe screaming down the way
And
On occasion
Some obnoxious fuck
Blaring bad videos at full volume
Heedless of others' peace
Guess which it was today

20201018.0430

Is the snail begrudged its shell
Or the crab or the turtle?
Is fish or fowl begrudged its bones?
Is the worker denied shoes
Or the dancer
The football player pads and helmet
Or shinguards in more sensible places?
Is a writer then held to a higher standard
For all of the smaller fanbase
And less compensation?

20201017.0430

Did you read each book on my shelf
It would not be enough
Though it would be a start
And more than many care to do
For I am not so set on canon as many
Nor so much as once I was
And my library has purged some volumes
Added more
With some not on display now
And others opened only once

20201016.0430

If poetry is a distillation
Let me pour a shot for you
I take mine neat more often than not
Though you might well want a mixer
Or some kind of garnish for your glass

20201015.0430

Some have called poetry distillation
Of life
Of language
And there is something to be said of the metaphor
The impurities removed to leave something more unified behind
But what is distilled is often more poison by volume
More costly
Even if the more prized for sitting long in the quiet dark
And the corpses of trees

20201014.0430

However deeply it might be buried
Someone with a shovel can dig it up in time
And sometimes the wind will shift
Or the rain will move the soil
Showing a piece of it for children to find
To their parents' complaints

20201013.0430

Alloys are made
In the hope of finding something better
And perhaps one can be found
But it is not this one
An early trial made of low-grade stuff
Advertised as far higher quality than the fact
And left to weather unattended
The rust has eaten it through
And one more shape or strike might
Break it

20201012.0430

We are on occupied land
Taken unjustly and through great pain
That lingers still
No scar over the still-open wound
At which too many pick and think themselves enlightened
And we have the audacity to celebrate the opening of that terror
State-sponsored violence to achieve a political end
But "we have to remember our history"
After all
And "our history" has to be the right one
Because we are supposed to be the right ones
Living in our city on the hill
They never talk about the hill being
Heaped up bodies of the dead
And we can all be grateful that they are not angrier than they are
As they have every right to be

20201011.0430

Although I seek to rest, the day drags on
The shining sun streams brightly
And the work cries out for doing
It never goes down for the nap
I myself would love to take
But hungers; I feed it
Clean the mess that follows from it
Clean the mess that comes yet later
Food all changed through being used
And as soon as I do one
Another calls
It is not as for my child, who
Came in time to feed and clothe herself
And who no longer needs me to wipe her
Tasks I do not miss
But will be ever thus
And I will stagger, sleepless, on

20201010.0430

The small spot on my scalp
Attracts my attention, itching
Prompting me to peel away a piece
Of myself, making my hair red
Dye in small doses deriving therefrom
Fading quickly as the flow fails
But soon enough, I scratch again
Trail out its traces through my fingertips
Pen-hand less pretty, perhaps, than my wont

20201009.0430

O, to be the stone
Rugged and reliable!
But I am instead the water
A cupful easily spilled
Drying in the sunlight
Mourned in a moment, perhaps
But like to be forgotten and replaced
The same is true if
I am the hand that holds the cup

20201008.0430

I feel myself being a Baggins again
Of the kind that came before Bilbo
Sitting in a strange place and sighing
That staying where I am is for the best
Even if habit would have me elsewhere

20201007.0430

Watching the hens scurry nervously
While my little chick feathers her own nest
I know she will fly far and high
Even if I cannot show her how
My wings long clipped by a beak too sharp
And too often too early set to preening

20201006.0430

There is always more to do
Another task to carry through
Yet more labor fit for rue
And another thing is true:
Some of those who will complain
Will repeat the sad refrain
That they labored to attain
So others needs must work again
But they do not count the cost
Used a system that's now lost
Giving nothing like a toss
For others' pain when they're the boss

20201005.0430

While watching the traffic go by,
He thought that he might oughta try
To follow the chicken,
But he took a lickin',
And some find they now have to pry.

20201004.0430

Yes
I understand
I get it
I hear you
I know
Acknowledged

20201003.0430

As local air begins to cool
The smoky threads will warp and weave
And form a pungent tapestry
The eye abjures but nose won't leave,
And in the warmth that weaving brings
Of boughs united while they char
There is delight and sometimes ease--
Though it will not, we hope, spread far!

20201002.0430

It may be I die today.
If it is, then who will say
That I always had a way
With people, or the other things
That eulogizing often brings
To mind for paupers and for kings
Alike, the gentle lies
With which the sermonizer tries
To soothe while fun'ral-goer cries?
I do not want them not to weep
When I am gone, or say I sleep,
For if they cry, they surely keep
Some ghost of love for me.

20201001.0430

She said
Daddy
You can come and watch
The other parents do
And I know it's true
But I also know
Despite the years
Seeing me provokes the fears
Of deeds as rightly lead to tears
And I cannot fault them for it